It’s always nice to see the Black community come together in order to have fun or better itself as a whole, which is why events like the annual NAACP conference are so beloved and well attended every year.

What’s also nice, however, is seeing an increasingly diverse America come together to work out its differences. Bigots would have us believe that America’s diversity is what makes us weak, and that making our melting pot homogenous would go a long way toward improving things. But more and more, American citizens of all races and creeds are seeking to prove bigots wrong by blending together without a hitch.

According to a new report from the U.S. Census Bureau [PDF], in the decade between 2000 and 2010, the number of Americans who declared themselves multiracial grew faster than the number of Americans who claim only one race in their heritage. Andrea Stone reports at the Huffington Post:

Those identifying with multiple races grew by 32 percent over the decade, for a total of 9 million. Single-race identifiers grew by just 9.2 percent, according to the 2010 Census, which also showed the slowest overall population growth rate since the Great Depression.

Ninety-two percent of those who reported being multiracial checked just two races on the Census questionnaire. Among the rest, 7.5 percent identified with three races and less than 1 percent reported four or more races.

Besides being a general sign that America’s new steps toward diversity are going well, the Census data also shows that where this diversity and intermingling is happening is encouraging.

As it turns out, the region that showed the most gains in multiracial citizens was the South, and those who identify as both Black and white were the most prevalent multiracial population.

In other words, centuries-old tensions are easing. Whereas the South was once heavily segregated, the kind of place where interracial relationships were grounds for murder, people seem to slowly be getting past that ugly history. And throughout the United States, though Blacks and whites have never had a perfect relationship, it appears as if, for many, those battles are in the past.

Americans still have a long way to go before everything is peaches and cream between its racial groups, of course. With more and more Latinos in America, the dynamic between African-Americans and whites is going to begin to be less and less prominent. But it’s nice to know that as we move forward to accept new challenges, we’re solving some of our oldest at the same time.

The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of BET Networks.

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